ISWA Working Group on Recycling and Waste Minimisation recap

Jeff Cooper, Chair of CIWM International Group recaps the previous meeting of the ISWA Working Group on Recycling and Waste Minimisation, which explored the world of textiles.

Hosted by the consultancy company Afry at their offices, the Group met earlier this year in Helsinki to examine a range of issues that prevent the greater reuse and recycling of used textiles.

The global impact of textile consumption

Opening the conference, Andreas Bartl from the Technical University of Vienna presented the “Tying ourselves in knots – challenges of the EU’s plans for sustainable textiles” session.

Globally in 2022, 116m tonnes of textiles were produced, of which cotton accounted for 25%. In 2000, the tonnage of cotton used was similar but accounted for 50% of production.

The population globally has grown by over 2 billion in the intervening period and consumers are also purchasing greater numbers of clothing articles, partly as a result of the (ultra) fast fashion business model.

Evelien Dils, a project manager from the Belgian consultancy VITO who specialises in the circular economy, showed how differences in the definition of textiles throughout the EU, as well as variations in household expenditures, meant that there were variations of 16-25kg per capita in textile consumption.

On average, garments were worn only seven times before being discarded and in the EU only 12% were separately collected – 50% were reused, 40% recycled and 10% became waste from that small fraction.

Also, from her research Dils noted that while online reuse was becoming more popular, the replacement rate was low. On average, for every 2.6 pieces of clothing reused, only one item of new clothing had been replaced.

Dilemmas over used clothing exports

There are an increasing number of problems associated with used clothing, especially exports to developing countries.

David Roman of the British Heart Foundation cited statistics from WRAP in his presentation that showed each year the UK diverts 650,000 tonnes of used textiles.

The British Heart Foundation handles 12,000 tonnes of used textiles through its shops – 3% is immediately discarded as waste at their shops.

A third of the textiles are resold through its shops, with the remainder sold to graders, who discard 5% as waste, and 55% is graded with the remainder sold on ungraded.

Around 2014, used textiles were being traded by the British Heart Foundation and other charities for around £600 per tonne.

However, over the past two years, prices have plummeted as international trade competition has become more intense and more countries have banned or restricted trade in used textiles.

Additionally, charities have found that the providers of corporate donations of used clothing have become more exacting in their requirements.

Some have required charities not to pass on their donated clothing and other textiles to certain countries, while others have requested that clothing should be passed to specific countries, often for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reasons.

The conference was fortunate to have a speaker, Alodia Kakujumiza, who could describe the position of used clothing, or mitumba in Swahili, from her experiences in Tanzania.

She stated that very little of the used clothing imported into Dar es Salaam in containers loaded with 100kg bales of used clothing was ever discarded as waste.

Local traders tended to deal in specific types of clothing and any items found in bales that were not the right specification were traded on to other dealers or passed on to villages where people were prepared to purchase items cheaply.

Mitumba retail trading offers a low financial entry employment opportunity and is often an employment opportunity for women. 

So, what about the images in the media showing heaps of waste textiles in several African countries?

These items are not from used textile imports but from the discarded clothing of residents, or the offcuts from workshops dedicated to refashioning used clothing or producing wiping cloths from suitable unusable textile items.

Pietro Luppi, a textile trader operating in Italy, explained his experiences in Mozambique and Mali at the conference.

He considered that there were some poor practices with bad quality material being placed in the centre of bales, some missorting, such as shirts going into bales of women’s clothing, and poor notation of bales.

He thought the worst problems came with material from the Netherlands where, because EPR for textiles has already recently been introduced, there is a considerable amount of poorly sorted bales being generated as the system suffers from inadequate capacity, while Dubai is the best.

Overall, he considered that imported waste textiles amounted to around 20-40%. 

Recycling issues

Reuse is obviously the ideal option for extending the life of used textiles but what happens when there is no further possibility of reuse?

The recycling of textiles is clearly an option but the barriers to this opportunity seem to be getting ever greater even as the science and technological solutions become more sophisticated.

This is partly due to the increasing amounts of non-natural fibres that are being added to textiles that are manufactured predominantly from natural fibres.

While this is done to improve the item’s wearability, and sometimes durability, reprocessing these additional fibres is often difficult. 

Lars Perrson, a business development manager with SYSAV, a municipality-owned waste management company based in Malmo, Sweden, showed that while they have equipment which is capable of sorting grades of material to a high standard this was often not sufficiently high for the processors of those materials to recycle them.

Success, when it comes, is often on an experimental or pilot basis.

Emanuel Beschmeier, a PhD researcher at the Technical University of Vienna, showed that it was possible to separate out elastane, commonly used to improve the stretchability of garments, by chemical processing which dissolves it in a non-hazardous solvent. 

On the outskirts of Helsinki is Infinited Fiber, a pioneering company that is taking cotton-rich textiles when there is no other reuse alternative and turning them into a new product, cellulose carbamate, trademarked as Infinna.

The cotton feedstock is cut into 6mm pieces and chemically processed to generate a liquid cellulose which can then be wet spun into the new cellulose fibre. Polyester and elastane fibres are removed in the processing and colour is also removed.

At present the company operates on two small shared sites and the production so far has been limited but, nevertheless, several brands have included the fibre in their products, albeit on short-run premium garment ranges.

Infinited Fiber has secured funding of €400m and a site for a 30,000 tonnes per annum facility by the Bay of Bothnia, in the north of Finland at Kemi, at a former Stora Enso paper mill with plenty of space and a skilled potential workforce available.

However, a similar company based in Sweden has recently gone under, so the support of brands which are willing to sponsor and promote the practical development of these recycled fibre companies will be essential over the coming 5 to 10-years to ensure a transition for successful utilisation of garments beyond the reuse cascade.

Also, it has to be recognised that the reprocessing of fibre in this way, and through a variety of other technological solutions, will only provide a very small proportion of the fibre feedstock required by the global garment manufacturing industry for the foreseeable future.

Emmy’s empire

The following day’s study tour started with a visit to an online seller of used clothing, Emmy, which has its premises 60km west of Helsinki in two adjacent light industrial units.

Here, 1500-2,000 batches of used clothing are received each week from consumers wishing to raise some money from their redundant high-quality clothing items plus shoes, bags, belts and designer eyewear.

The business started a decade ago, well before most online buyer-seller systems specifically for used clothing had been set up.

Customers bag their items and put their registration details both inside the bag and outside and deposit the bag at one of numerous drop-off points in shopping centres throughout Helsinki and in other main towns. These include both main department stores in Helsinki: Stockmann and Sokos.

These bags are the batches sent by road transport, mainly in roll cages to Emmy, generating 5-8,000 items each week.

At the factory site the bags are opened, each item logged against the client’s details and assessed for product type, size and quality graded into four condition categories and a selling price designated by a team of 12 women, who act as the “eyes” of the customer.

The items are then put on a manikin, photographed and put online for sale.

If there are items which the team regards as unsalable, they are set aside for charity and the seller is informed, after giving prior consent through the registration process.

The products are then boxed and sent across the tarmac to the storage warehouse, which has capacity for up to 100,000 items, before being prepared for dispatch.

Items are online for up to six months with the price dropping each month before the item is then donated to Kierratys-keskus, a charity that has shop outlets in Helsinki, Espoo and Vantaa.

In 2023, of the 260,000 items received by Emmy 210,000 were sold on with clients getting a return of €6 for an item sold by Emmy for €20 and €80 for an item sold for €100.

All sales used to be online with items despatched to customers from the unit.

More recently, some of the best quality items have been put up for sale through the two department stores: Stockmann and Sokos, both of which have considerable floorspace set aside for these second-hand garments and accessories.

Womenswear accounts for 90% of sales but children’s clothing and menswear offers and sales are creeping up slowly.

Kierratys-keskus operates more like the UK mainstream charities, with shop outlets collecting and selling a range of items, including the items donated by Emmy’s.

Recently it has started to find that shopping centres in Finland have begun to embrace the second-hand ethic and have offered new units to these organisations – the rent charged is 90% of the commercial rate.

Some shopping centres will have several of these shops co-located in an area and designated as a Second-Hand Centre.

Postscript: The future of textile reuse from 2025

Pietro Luppi, a textile trader operating in Italy, showed what may happen when mandatory collections of used textiles are introduced by local authorities in 2025 under the revised EU Waste Directive, which was agreed in 2018 before the UK formally left the EU.

Italy pre-empted its obligation by introducing textile separation in 2022 rather than 2025. The effect nationally was not that dramatic, with an increase from 2.6kg per capita in 2021, rising to 2.9kg in 2022.

Overall textile waste discarded in Italy is around 11kg per capita annually, so a large proportion of used textiles is still being discarded as residual waste.

However, there has been a problem ensuring that used textiles can be used productively with recent statistics showing:

There is a long-standing agreement where containers are placed by charities and traders in specific locations agreed with municipalities in return for income and statistical data.

However, even a payment of €0.10c per kg to municipalities is more than can be sustained by the traders.

Sorting plants are also being squeezed by higher running costs and ever-lower prices being paid for international shipments.

Additionally, Italy is preparing for an EPR for textiles, with five EPR consortia having been established. 

Collections will go up with mandatory local authority collections to be introduced in the UK next year but will there be markets for the additional used textiles either through reuse or recycling?